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Campus | Bryn Mawr |
Semester | Spring 2020 |
Registration ID | PHILB238001 |
Course Title | Science, Tech & the Good Life |
Credit | 1.00 |
Department | Environmental Studies |
Instructor | Dostal,Robert J. |
Times and Days | TTh 02:25pm-03:45pm
|
Room Location | OL116 |
Additional Course Info | Class Number: 1389 "Science, Technology, and the Good Life" considers the relation of science and technology to each other and to everyday life, particularly with respect to questions of ethics and politics. In this course, we try to get clear about how we understand these domains and their interrelationships in our contemporary world. We try to clarify the issues relevant to these questions by looking at the contemporary debates about the role of automation and digital media and the problem of climate change. These debates raise many questions including: the appropriate model of scientific inquiry (is there a single model for science?, how is science both experimental and deductive?, is science merely trial and error?, is science objective?, is science value-free?), the ideological standing of science (has science become a kind of ideology?), the autonomy of technology (have the rapidly developing technologies escaped our power to direct them?), the politics of science (is science somehow essentially democratic?, and are "scientific" cultures more likely to foster democracy?, or is a scientific culture essentially elitist and autocratic?), the relation of science to the formation of public policy (experts rule?, are we in or moving toward a technocracy?), the role of technology and science in the process of modernization, Westernization, and globalization (what role has science played in industrialization and what role does it now play in a post-industrial world?). To find an appropriate way to consider these questions, we look at the pairing of science with democracy in the Enlightenment project and study contemporary work in the philosophy of science, political science, and ethics. Approach: Critical Interpretation (CI), Inquiry into the Past (IP); Haverford: Humanities (HU) ( ) Enrollment Cap: 15: This course is ONLY open to 360 students. This course is part of 360 Climate Change: Science and Politics. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. This 360 cluster will integrate philosophical, scientific, mathematical, and policy perspectives to highlight both the complexity of the issue and the many innovative ideas that are being developed to address it worldwide . We will explore how scientific and technological development have combined with societal notions of the good life and public policy initiatives to promote the energy-intensive, growth-oriented consumer society. We will work actively with mathematical models of energy systems to evaluate the impact of various technologies and possible courses of action and intervention. We will look at how the advent of human-induced climate change has prompted new ways of thinking about quality of life, new technological approaches to energy supply and sustainable development, and new political solutions to problems of resource exploitation and environmental justice. We will explore community-level climate sustainability initiatives through fieldwork in the "green city" of Freiburg, Germany and in Philadelphia. If you are interested in the 360 program, you must fill out the application which is due on Nov. 6th at NOON by clicking on link. https://www.brynmawr.edu/360/spring-2020-application-climate-change. This 360 cluster includes enrolling in MATH B151 & POLS B256. |
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